I expect to see some Linux kernel messages on the console, but there aren't any.

Answer:

This is absolutely normal when using the ELDK with root filesystem
over NFS. The ELDK startup routines will start the syslog daemon,
which will collect all kernel messages and write them into a logfile
( /var/log/messages ).

If you want to see the messages
at the console, either run "tail -f /var/log/messages &" on the
console window, or stop the syslog daemon by issuing a
"/etc/rc.d/init.d/syslog stop" command. Another alternative is to increase
the console_loglevel of the kernel (any message with log level less than
console_loglevel will be printed to the console). With the following command
the console_loglevel could be set at runtime: "echo 8 > /proc/sys/kernel/printk".
Now all messages are displayed on the console.